Having said that, I wouldn’t say that this term receives too much scrutiny for Laruelle. Besides the beginning and the end of the essay, the only real joke about communication is to highlight this antithetical moment when Deleuze remarks he has a loathing of debate. He spends much more time analyzing and focusing on other concepts.

I am not sure if you are implying that my previous statement declares that because some philosophy is esoteric, and thereby difficult to understand, that it is “nonsense.” This is certainly not the case I am making — it is quite the opposite.

I simply believe that philosophy has incredible value and that the world would benefit by sharing in such a treasure.

I also did not say that the “mass appeal of eastern philosophy” shows that it is correct; however, its appeal is evidence of the power of simplicity. My perspective is that modern western philosophy would reach a broader audience if it were delivered in a way that the average person could understand, without necessarily diluting its intended message or meaning.

I could be wrong in the following assumption but if an individual wants a certain audience to understand their message, they would deliver it in a way that the audience can understand. It would, therefore, be logical to conclude that many philosophers do not wish to extend their offerings beyond the realm of their own mind or beyond other philosophers who speak the same language — otherwise they would deliver their message in a way that the masses could understand. In my mind, this is potentially a tragic loss.

On a much lighter note, I am quite ammused and find myself relating to philosophers who find value in simplicity after extensive exposure to “advanced” thought…

“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.” ~ Michel deMontaigne

Thanks for provoking thought and for providing another perspective to widen my own…

Cheers…

Kent

You seem to be presenting the reader with a false dichotomy. It seems strange that philosophy could only appeal to a mass of people or only enjoy hearing themselves speak. Theoretical physics can only be understood by a handful of people, but even fewer would say that it only exists so that physicists can hear themselves talk.

The mass appeal of eastern “philosophy” does not show that it is highly insightful or correct. It could just as easily be explained by pointing out that eastern philosophy (at least the particular variant popular in the west) is completely compatible with capitalism. It is fashionable nonsense, a perennial philosophy.

I have always found it strange that one can read something, not understand it, and declare that the reading is nonsense. It is, of course, possible that some philosophy is nonsense, but it is equally possible that the philosophy in question deals with ideas that are not common sense and are difficult to understand.

Herein lies the true paradox: Philosophy has much to offer a world that is in great need of its wisdom, yet many philosophers speak a language that makes their valuable philosophies all but completely inaccessible to the world.

I do not intend to criticize but to make a reasonable observation and estimate that 90% of the world population would not understand 90% of the ideas put forth on this blog site alone… yet I am sure much of them would benefit if they could…

Personally, I have independently studied philosophy for two years and I still find much of it difficult to digest. And I have a graduate degree…

Has philosophy become such an artform in and of itself that it can only be colored by certain language? Are philosophers trying to provide value to a wide audience or are they more interested in hearing themselves speak or in attempting to write longer sentences containing larger words than their contemporaries and predecessors?

It is no wonder that the ancient eastern philosophies, such as Taoism and Buddhism, are so widely read, interpreted and imitated still today — they “say” much with less words, which, in my humble opinion, is much more of a difficult accomplishment than presenting the same idea with more words…

Thanks, as always, for your thoughts…

Kent

Firstly congratulations and thanks to yourself and Taylor Adkins for a great blog site.

I’ve not read Laruelle, but it seems a mistake to me to see Deleuze (and Guattari’s!) critique of ‘transcendent artifacts like consensus and communication’ as a form of philosophical self-enclosure: this would miss the connectivity, mixture/contamination of signs and codes, etc. inherent in their ‘philosophy of immanence.’ Their point, I think, is that there is no transcendent function (God, truth, universal reason, nature, society, humanity etc.) to ensure that what is agreed or communicated is ultimately actually the same, or indeed that those agreeing or communicating can agree or communicate ’self-identically’ with themselves. However this is far from being intended as an argument for solipsistic inertia or the pre-eminence of an ‘arche-philosophy’ preceding all art and science. One of the points of ‘What is philosophy?’ is to enable philosophy to imagine multiple planes of immanence or consistency (rather than consensus) in which open-ended philosophical concepts can live and flourish with other ‘co-concepts.’ As someone interested in non-western philosophies, I find Deleuze & Guattari’s work one of the very few examples of western philosophy to allow other philosophies to be imagined while retaining their ‘indifference’ to western philosophy (Jullien’s work on Chinese philosophy perhaps being another more sustained example of such an approach). In other words, the ‘outside of philosophy’ for D&G is a multiple outside and it is this multiplicity that disables any transcendence.

Just a few thoughts while considering Laruelle’s critique. All the best.